The Innocents (1961)
2.35:1 (16x9 Enhanced)
Dolby Digital 2.0
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, $14.98

“Do you have an imagination? Truth is very seldom understood by any but imaginative persons,” says a suave potential employer (Michael Redgrave) to the demure spinster Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) in The Innocents. When Giddens responds positively, adding that above all else she “loves children,” she wins the job of governess for the man’s orphaned niece and nephew, who reside in his country estate far from London. The man gives Giddens complete control of the children and says emphatically that he has no interest in involving them in his London life.

Giddens’ new home, a cavernous mansion known as Bly House, is surrounded by miles of lush gardens, ponds and forests. The governess spends hours roaming the estate and grounds with her new charges, 8-year-old Flora and 10-year-old Miles. These precocious and charming children are at first a source of delight but soon reveal some unusual characteristics; both seem curiously stuck on a haunting lullaby, the same tune that emanates from a music box Giddens finds in the attic — a box that belonged to the children’s former governess, the tragic Miss Jessel.

The housekeeper reluctantly tells Giddens the story of Jessel, who took her own life when her lover, Quint, the boorish valet at Bly House, died in the courtyard. Upon hearing the scandalous details of Jessel and Quint’s affair, Giddens fears the children may have seen the “indecencies” that occurred throughout the house. It isn’t long before Giddens can hear the spectral sobbing of the miserable Jessel floating through the halls of Bly House after sundown. Soon a terrified Giddens begins to glimpse apparitions of the former governess and valet in the shadows of the house and, most frightening of all, in the bright summer sun.

When Flora and Miles smirkingly deny the ghosts’ presence, Giddens becomes convinced that the former lovers plan to posses the children from beyond the grave, and she soon decides that only she can save the children from the demons of Bly House.

Based on Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents has long been considered one of the finest ghost stories the cinema has ever produced. Lushly photographed in CinemaScope by the legendary Freddie Francis, BSC (Sons and Lovers, The Elephant Man, Glory), the picture’s chilling monochrome landscape radiates a definitive Gothic atmosphere. The Innocents marked the second teaming of Francis and director Jack Clayton (following the 1959 feature Room at the Top), and it remains a hallmark of the gifted cinematographer’s career. Francis had won an Academy Award just one year earlier for Sons and Lovers, and three decades later he won another for Glory. His many awards and citations include the 1997 ASC International Award and the 1997 BSC Lifetime Achievement Award.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment recently released The Innocents on DVD for the first time, and the film’s many fans will be impressed with the quality of the presentation. The picture transfer has a uniform tonality and beautifully re-creates the film’s CinemaScope vista. The picture’s many candlelit interiors are sharp, as are the panoramic exteriors, which were shot on location at Sheffield Park Gardens and Estate in East Sussex, England. The audio has been given a two-channel stereo track that occasionally flattens dialogue but gives the film’s spare sound effects some helpful dimension.

This two-sided DVD also offers a crisp but badly cropped full-frame version. Unfortunately, the only supplement included in this package is the picture’s wildly inappropriate, shrieking theatrical trailer.

It’s unfortunate Fox didn’t release this popular and influential horror film as part of its “Studio Classics” line, because the project’s pedigree warrants some type of special treatment. Considering the fine work done by Francis, Clayton, Kerr, composer George Auric, and screenwriters Truman Capote and William Archibald, the word “classic” certainly applies.

— Kenneth Sweeney